The push toward tighter regulation and transparency in the virtual currency market continued Tuesday during a two-hour Senate hearing. J. Christopher Giancarlo, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and Jay Clayton, from the Securities and Exchange Commission, testified on Capitol Hill, addressing concerns from senators on both sides of the aisle. Both officials, appointed by Pres...Read More

U.S. stocks plummeted again yesterday, with the Dow shattering records with its steepest one-day point loss ever. What's more, the S&P 500 Index (SPX) dropped more than 4%, marking the second back-to-back loss of more than 1%. The last time the index suffered two such losses within a month of touching a record high was January 2015, according to data from Schaeffer's Senior Quantitative Analyst Ro...Read More

(Releads, adds RBS denial, details, business group response)By Emma Rumney and Lawrence WhiteLONDON, Feb 6 (Reuters) - Royal Bank of Scotland on Tuesday denied a British lawmaker's allegation that its executives misled a parliamentary committee over the extent to which the bank mistreated small businesses during and after the financial crisis.The chief executive and chairman of state-owned RBS we...Read More

NEW YORK, Feb 6 (Reuters) - The U.S. Treasury Department on Tuesday sold $26 billion of three-year government notes at a yield of 2.280 percent, which was the highest yield for the maturity at an auction since May 2007, Treasury data showed.The size of the latest three-year Treasury note auction , the first leg of this week's quarterly refunding, was $2 billion more than the prior three-year aucti...Read More

(New throughout, adds details of IPO, Argentine economic context)BUENOS AIRES, Feb 6 (Reuters) - Argentine biotechnology firm Bioceres SA on Tuesday extended by one day the offer period on its initial public offering in the U.S. market, as Wall Street shares edged higher after sharp recent losses but other global stock markets slid further.The company did not explain in a letter to the local stoc...Read More

Andrew Newland, chief executive of ANGLE PLC (LON:AGL), discusses with Proactive their significant new collaboration with healthcare giant Abbott Laboratories.The two will be working on a metastatic breast cancer study.Abbott will provide its proprietary PathVysion HER-2 DNA FISH Probe kits for ANGLE's ANG-002 US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) study for FISH (fluorescence in situ hybridizati...Read More

* LME/ShFE arb: (Updates with closing prices)By Peter HobsonLONDON, Feb 6 (Reuters) - Prices of industrial metals fell on Tuesday as global stock markets plunged for a fourth day, prompting investors to cut exposure to riskier assets and strengthening the dollar. Global shares have lost $4 trillion in value from record highs in late January, while the dollar, seen as a safer asset, has risen from...Read More

The World Gold Council's Alistair Hewitt talks through their Q4 and full year 2017 report.He says gold demand rallied in the closing months of 2017, gaining 6% year-on-year in Q4 to reach 1,095.8 tonnes.However he adds that overall demand for the full year fell by 7% to 4,071.7 tonnes, compared with 2016.Hewitt says inflows into ETFs continued steadily throughout the year, totalling 202.8t, but la...Read More

NEW YORK, Feb 6 (Reuters) - Billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn warned on Tuesday that investors have exposure to "way too many derivatives" and called the stock market's nosedive just "rumblings of an earthquake.""The market is really not a place for the average person to be playing around with derivatives," Icahn said on CNBC. (Reporting by Jennifer Ablan; Edit...Read More

It's been a wild ride for U.S. stocks today. Following its worst session ever, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJI) was down almost 570 points at its intraday low, but has since swung to a modest gain. The S&P 500 Index (SPX) and Nasdaq Composite (IXIC) have also been volatile, but were last seen pacing for a fourth straight down day. Meanwhile, the CBOE Volatility Index (VIX) -- or the stoc...Read More

LONDON, Feb 6 (Reuters) - Emerging equities have held up slightly better than their developed counterparts in a broad shake-out that began on Wall Street and has reverberated around the globe, though none have escaped the downdraft.Global equities have been in freefall since data on Feb. 2 showed the biggest U.S. wage growth since 2009, fuelling expectations of faster rate hikes to combat inflatio...Read More

(Adds quotes)WARSAW, Feb 6 (Reuters) - Poland's economy could suffer if it sees a reduction in European Union funds after 2021, Fitch Ratings lead analyst on Poland said on Tuesday.Arnaud Louis also told reporters that increased tensions between the EU and Poland on a range of issues including Warsaw's overhaul of its judiciary had so far not had much impact on investment."Rising intra-EU te...Read More

WASHINGTON, Feb 6 (Reuters) - U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Jay Clayton said on Tuesday he "can't really say" what caused the dramatic drop in stock prices during recent trading sessions, but that all signs indicate financial markets are functioning normally.Testifying before Congress, Clayton said from a functional perspective, markets appeared healthy on Monday when...Read More

While equities bounce here there and everywhere, rates FX and precious metals stay fairly zen.The popular short-vol ETN - XIV - will be liquidated on Feb 21.We take a look at the VIX Term structure & S&P Organic Vol.Market Intro CNBC: 10:50 AM EST For all the churning in equities (SPY, DIA, QQQ, IWM), movement in FX (UUP), rates (TLT, IEF, AGG) and PM (GLD, SLV) has been quite staid. Th...Read More

In light of stock market panic, would a dollar rally hinder gold?History shows that both gold and dollar can rally together.Gold's relative strength (vs. equities) is the key variable, however.For the first time in several months, gold is showing an increase in its relative strength versus the equity market. For reasons that have become abundantly clear, the metal's attraction as a financial s...Read More

Feb 6 (Reuters) - St. Louis Federal Reserve President James Bullard on Tuesday said he does not expect big changes in how monetary policy is managed under new Fed Chairman Jerome Powell."I don't see policy changing appreciably," Bullard told a conference in Lexington, Kentucky, adding that Powell would likely take economic data similarly into account as did his predecessors, Ben Bernanke...Read More

Following in the footsteps of fellow automakers General Motors (GM) and Toyota Motor (TM), Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) is scheduled to report earnings after the close tomorrow, Feb. 7, and while the stock has a history of big one-day post-earnings swings, volatility expectations are even higher than normal this time around. For example, TSLA shares have averaged a single-session move of 4.7% after ear...Read More

(Recasts, updates prices, adds comment, changes byline, dateline; previous LONDON)By Gertrude Chavez-DreyfussNEW YORK, Feb 6 (Reuters) - Bitcoin recovered from three-month lows below $6,000 in choppy trading on Tuesday, but worries lingered about a global regulatory clampdown and moves by banks to ban buying bitcoin with credit cards.Investors swooped in after a steep fall. On the Luxembourg-base...Read More

London Capital Group's head of research Jasper Lawler gives his take on the sell-off in the equity markets.The dumping of stock comes less than two weeks after the US stock market hit a record high.Lawler says the speed and nature of the massive decline in the Dow Jones raises some serious market structure questions.  Meet Anglo Asian Mining Plc, Condor Gold PLC, Connemara Mining and Papua Mi...Read More

PARIS, Feb 6 (Reuters) - French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire on Tuesday said a global market sell-off was an expected correction of high asset prices. Asked if he was worried as world stock markets nosedived for a fourth day running on Tuesday, Le Maire told reporters:"It's not a surprise. Some assets had reached very high prices and there is therefore a correction on stock markets."&...Read More